Yesterday, I was in a meeting with my team of project managers and we were brainstorming ways that we could increase the influence of the department and continue strengthening the project management capabilities of the team. Formal project management is fairly new to many of the departments, and this is one of our core responsibilities.

It didn’t take long for the conversation to turn to metrics.

What else can we measure to asses the health of the projects and portfolio?

What can we report to get attention from the team when projects are slipping?

One of my PMs looked around the table and asked: “How about also getting better at communicating the successes? Do we communicate how many hours or dollars everyone will save when we finish a project?”

She was right, of course. Everyone understands that you have to measure to manage. But, do we do enough counting in order to celebrate?